A Transmission from Burke
Monica was sitting at a Starbucks. She had stopped in some nameless town in Oklahoma to rest from driving and check her email. She felt depressed about leaving her father. She kept thinking of him walking around the house alone. She would often cook him meals, tuna fish and noodles, shit on a shingle, macaroni and cheese mixed with ground chuck. Then they would sit together and eat those meals talking about the days they’d had. She would wash his clothes and help him weed-whack the lawn because he had allergies and the weed-whacking made him sneeze a lot. She thought about all of his little habits, from drinking too much coffee to eating an excess of powdered donuts, to leaving barely any orange juice and milk left in the cartons and putting them back in the refrigerator anyway. She loved how he watched baseball games from beginning to end. Even though she did not love baseball, she would pretend she liked it so as not to upset him. She felt worried about him.
As she was sitting there, secluded in a sad daydream about her father, a woman sat across from her at the table. Monica realized she knew who she was. It was Ashley, the woman who read Sherwood Burke’s poem at the Protest 2.0 meeting. Monica felt extremely confused and said, “Ashley?”
“Yes, from the meeting.”
“Yeah,” Monica said.
“I have a new email.”
“Wait, how did you know I was here?”
“I have my sources.”
“You have sources?”
“Yes, but so do you,” Ashley said.
“Do we have the same sources?”
“No, but they’re similar in form and function.”
“Okay.” Monica wanted to go back to daydreaming about her dad, but she knew that Ashley must have something to tell her, or she wouldn’t have taken the time to find her in the middle of Oklahoma.
Ashley said, “I have a new email. It is Sherwood Burke’s Talking Points.”
“Burke has Talking Points?”
“Yes, in the past it would have been called a manifesto, an ideology, or even a treatise, but today ideas are called Talking Points.”
“Show me the email.”
Ashley took her laptop and went to her email and pulled up Burke’s email and showed it to Monica. As Monica read, Ashley sipped on a chai and stared into space politely.
The Talking Points of Sherwood Burke
I, Sherwood Burke, propose a new government, a new paradigm, a new mode of living that will make all Americans happy, I will give them what they want, because I am the Last True Democrat!
These facts were revealed to me and I consider them the most important facts:
1: People of the lower-uneducated-classes are having children at a higher rate than people from the middle to upper-educated-classes. The educated classes are only having babies at a.5 percent level but the people from the lower classes are having babies at an astounding 3.7 percent level, which implies that in thirty years the uneducated rabble of society will be the dominant majority in America. We must prepare a way for them to live!
2: Americans are fat. We must make a way for them to stop consuming disgusting food and not exercising.
3. The United States government spent sixty-six billion dollars on a plane called the Taradactle 24, which did not work, and there was zero demand for the production of the aircraft. It was only made because a company gave campaign donations to politicians, which got them voted in, which led to the politicians voting in legislation to have it made. It was a sixty-six billion dollar scam. During this same time in legislative history the congress voted to decrease funding to the Center for Disease Control (CDC). The CDC performs a vital function. Our politicians are more concerned with their campaign donations than with the health of its citizens, therefore it is no longer a legitimate government.
WHAT WE NEED NOW
Destruction of quick and easy transportation by cars and trucks!
It will destroy nationwide corporations that depend on the highway system and the automobile. Without the automobile, states will be forced to be more isolated in their economic activities and will have to depend on their own resources and not the resources of other states and countries to survive. This will lead to the growth of local cultures and economies.
This will make everyone happy but the only way we can achieve this is by throwing off the chains of the automobile and the interstate highway system. The logic is sound. If we take away automobiles then Americans will be forced to become more local and more sustainable in their behaviors.
In thirty and especially in fifty years the educated class will become so small that they will need to become like the monks and nuns of the Dark Ages. The creation of the monasteries and convents in the Dark and Middle Ages was because the educated became so few after the collapse of the Roman Empire that they realized they were outnumbered and were not the majority. The majority was the rabble plowing the fields and slaughtering the goats. They realized that they did not matter.
This is the new plan, the new dream, we can still have democracy, checks and balances and a president, I don’t care, but THE AUTOMOBILE MUST GO!
Monica read the Talking Points and said to Ashley, “This is fucking insane.”
“It’s logical.”
“I guess so. But I like my car. I like cellphones and flat screen televisions.”
“That’s because you grew up that way, that’s all. And you don’t like those things, you feel comfortable around those things. There is a difference between ‘liking’ something and feeling ‘comfortable’ around something. A lot of older white people feel ‘comfortable’ when they don’t see any black people working at a business or in their house. Does that make it right?”
“Are you saying I’m some sort of racist but in terms of my lifestyle, like I’m prejudiced against a world that doesn’t have cellphones and flat screen televisions?”
“Yeah, you don’t understand it, so you dismiss it.”
“I don’t know.”
“We are comfortable being surrounded by gadgets and science but humans lived for thousands of years never having those things, and in those thousands of years we never had man-induced global warming or so much destruction to the environment and we never spent so little time with our families and neighbors. Before automobiles, government was very local, and people created the products they used, from clothes to plates and cups. We had a world of unique things that we made with our own hands. It was different before, and I believe better.”
“But people died a lot earlier then?”
“Yes, but they lived a life where they created things. What is better: living a life creating things or working for some corporation pumping out plastic parts all day, or working in an office doing work for a company that doesn’t care if you exist or not? What is better?”
“God, I don’t know. I need to find Mike.”
“Go find Mike and you’ll see.”
Monica picked up her latte and went out the door. She didn’t say goodbye to Ashley. She thought of her father again and how much he loved his flat screen television.
The CIA Agent
Monica drove for a day and a night. The meeting place was a thousand miles away from Nevitsky’s house. She couldn’t stop thinking about Michael. She wanted him back so badly. She wanted to hold him, she wanted to laugh with him, she liked how he made her feel safe. She wanted to feel safe again. There didn’t seem to be any safety left in the world. She wondered if she was doing the right thing. She doubted if trying to find Michael was the right thing to do. She doubted if it would make her life better. Monica considered the pros and cons. If she didn’t find Michael, she could return home and get a job designing websites or doing IT for a large corporation. She could work hard for years and get promotions and maybe one day have enough money to have kids and get a house when she was like thirty-five. Maybe if she tried hard enough it would work. She was still young and pretty. She could find someone else to love, a man who wouldn’t disappear.